It’s just days until Australia’s best short filmmakers will gather in a Brisbane city-centre car park, with planes flying overhead and the smell of popcorn in the air to find out who will win at the 2013 West End Film Festival.

$1,000 prizes will be awarded in each of the following categories:

• Best Film Judged by Industry
• Best Film Judged by Community
• Best Animation
• Indigenous Filmmaking Award

For last year’s Industry Award winner, Peekaboo Director Damien Power has his fingers crossed that his two entries this year (Boot and Bat Eyes) will bring him the same fortune; ‘Winning the WEFF Award last year brought more recognition to my film and me as a filmmaker. I applied for WEFF because it seemed like a great community-minded short film festival. It’s a fantastic line up of shorts.’ Damien’s two entries were created as part of a youth theatre project in Sydney, where he worked with two playwrights to adapt stage monologues for the silver screen.

For others, it’s their first experience of the West End Film Festival; Hummingbirds Producer James Woods says; ‘We’re really excited to be part of it; after showing the film at festivals in LA and in Cannes, to finally be bringing the film to a screening closer to home is great.’

Entries have come from far and wide this year; including one finalist film, made in Yuendumu, NT. Jack and Jones Animation Supervisor, Jonathan Daw tells us the 4-minute animation is ‘a story written by a Warlpiri man; based on some of his experiences as a young man growing up in a remote community in central Australia. We did have some trouble with using plasticine puppets in the desert; the rate we were working at was about 10 seconds per day.’ After winning the top prize at the Fistful of Films festival in Darwin, it’s the film’s first screening on the East Coast.

And with a particular emphasis on animation, West End Film Festival is also proud to be showing a number of other animated shorts this coming Sunday. Writer/Producer of 2013 finalist film The Backpack, Marianna Shek told us her animation work was inspired by a rough sketch she once doodled and then she went on to collaborate with local artist Dave Collinson to create the piece. Marianna says ‘It’s very exciting; we’ve not actually been screened in Queensland yet so it will be the first time that’s happened and it’s really the very first big deal festival for the film.’ When asked what she would do with the prize money, she wasn’t afraid to admit, ‘That would be so awesome I would be rendered speechless.’

And the excitement isn’t just among the filmmakers; organisers, too, are getting hyped for the event. Festival Founder and Director, Mike Witt, says ‘We are itching to announce the very deserved winners of this year’s awards. Judging was extremely difficult and we know that we’re in for 2 excellent sessions of the best short films to come out of Australia this year.’

We’ve got:

• Tear-jerkers
• Stand-in girlfriends
• Cheeky crabs
• Foreign landscapes
• Nerd revenge
• Young love
• Visual arthouse
• Tested friendships
• Triumphs over adversity
• Unpredictable hitchhikers
• A military thriller
• Coastal paradises
• Colliding teenagers
• Unusual diets
• Cowboy love